And a good thing. Right now, I would happily reach over and crush his throat with one hand.
Dr. Onagi came over to stand with us. I looked at him. “Is it appropriate for us to speak?”
He looked at Ms. Benning, who smiled in response. “Not a problem. The hospital is named in their suit as well, so we’re on the same side. What’s on your mind, Dr. Onagi?”
“I don’t trust them.”
“Erm, this is news?” I raised an eyebrow at him.
“No, no, I mean beyond the obvious adversarial situation. In particular, the eldest daughter just seems like a real piece of work. I wonder, if they lose the case, if she’ll take it gracefully.”
Ms. Benning’s eyebrows rose. “You mean, as in sabotage of some kind?”
Dr. Onagi nodded.
Oh, wow. I couldn’t actually feel the blood drain from my face—no blood, after all—but the elevator-dropping feeling was definitely there. “We could win, and still lose.”
“This bears some careful thought,” Ms. Benning said. “Being found in contempt of a court order could prejudice your case, so don’t do anything precipitous. Just the same…”
We settled into an uncomfortable silence as we each stared into space.
Armageddon
Bill
June 2223
82 Eridani
I was going over some plans with Garfield when I received an emergency call from Captain Richards. I popped up the video window. “What’s up, captain?”
“Bill, we were doing so well with clearing the busters from orbit that I decided I could spare a dozen or so killers to reconnoiter the Lagrange points. To see what Medeiros is up to, you understand?”
I nodded, not liking the implication.
Richards popped up a grainy, long-distance image. “We picked this up.”
The frame rate and resolution were low, but I could make out that Medeiros was working around the metal ingots used as raw materials for the autofactories.
“What’s he doing?” I asked.
“We ran some image interpolations. It looks like he’s attaching busters to an ingot with cables.”
“Oh, hell.” A poor man’s asteroid mover. The ingots weren’t huge, but they were metal, and would survive re-entry almost unscathed. One of those could certainly create a new Barringer crater. More than enough to wipe out a colony, anyway.
“This advances our schedule. How are you doing with the printers?”
“We’ve got a half-dozen.” Richards grimaced. “One is working on a cradle for Mack, three are working on drones and roamers, and two are producing small busters, per your plans.” He shook his head. “What’s with twenty-kilogram busters, anyway?”
I gave him a weak smile. “Something Bob has been using as anti-personnel weapons. But our experience with the mosquito killers shows that more small attackers can be as effective as a few large attackers—and more flexible. Medeiros will probably be putting more armor on his busters by now, so the killers are going to be less effective. So these will up the ante.”
“So do we switch to nothing but busters?”
“Not just yet, Captain. We can do without Mack for now, but we need drones and roamers, for assembly if nothing else. I’ll run a min-max analysis to figure out what mix of construction will get us the best return. I’ll let you know.”
We nodded and disconnected at the same time. I turned to Garfield, who had been listening to the whole exchange.
“He’s planning on just smashing things, isn’t he?” Garfield looked gray with worry.
“It seems to be a theme with the Brazilian probes, Gar. I don’t know if that’s a cultural thing, or military conditioning, or something that Brazilian scientists installed as imperatives when they were building the replicants.”
“Or they’re all insane.”
I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, in the end. We have to react to the threat. And I don’t see any reason to change the no-quarter policy on Medeiros.”
Garfield’s only reply was a snort of agreement.
* * *
“He’s started moving the ingot.” Richards glared at me out of the video window.
“How did he manage that?” I asked. “He was nowhere near having enough busters, just yesterday.”
Richards shrugged. “He still doesn’t, really. I think he’s starting before he’s really ready. The acceleration is vanishingly small.”
“But he can add more in-flight, as he makes them.”
Richards nodded. “Unfortunately, it’s too soon to tell which colony he’s aiming for. He may not even have decided yet. It’ll be another twenty-four hours before he has to commit.”
“We have printers on both colonies, now, right?” I started to run my hand through my hair, then caught myself. “So there’s no advantage to him one way or the other. My money’s on Asgard, simply because he can get it there sooner.”
“We have to move on him now.” Richards set his jaw. “I’ll contact General Kiroshi, see what he can put in the air.”
“Do that, Captain. Call me back.”
* * *
“It’s not enough,” Kiroshi said. “We are two busters short of a one-on-one matchup, and that’s without dealing with Medeiros himself. We can’t win this.”
“And that’s assuming we have eyes on all his devices. If he’s carrying a couple in his hold, it will put us even farther behind.”
“I don’t see it,” I replied, looking at Richards. “If he had more, they’d be pulling the ingot as well.”
“Do we have a choice?”
I sighed. “Not really, Captain. The longer we wait, the harder it will be to redirect the ingot. And by the time it actually gets here, we’ll have built two more busters at the most.”
There were a few more comments, but we all knew we really had no choice. These busters would have to be preprogrammed, as we couldn’t afford the time to add SCUT comms. We sent them out from both colonies, timed to arrive simultaneously.
I was about to disconnect, when I had a thought. “Gentlemen, how many mosquito killers do we have left? And where are they?”
Kiroshi answered. “A little over two hundred. They’re all in orbit around Takama. We haven’t had any close-in encounters at either colony for a few days. Why?”
“Let’s throw them into the mix, . I’ll do some calculations, and give you the times and vectors.”
* * *
Our busters arrived at the expected time and place. Because they were operating without SCUTs, we were getting the video play-by-play several minutes after the fact. Whatever was going to happen had already happened.
There could be no finesse on this operation. Each one of our busters could take out one of Medeiros’ busters. We would aim several busters at Medeiros himself, but he would use his busters to intercept. Barring a miracle and him missing one, we’d be left with Medeiros and two busters to deal with.
We watched as fourteen video images closed in on fourteen targets, then fourteen video images disappeared.
“Well, that was textbook,” Richards said.
I smiled tightly. “And right about now, Medeiros should be feeling pretty smug.”
Two new video windows popped up as the incoming mosquito killers zeroed in on Medeiros. We knew we would leave two of Medeiros’ busters, but we made sure those busters were tethered to the ingot and unavailable for defense.
Medeiros detected the incoming killers and turned tail, but he was far too late. Unlike the busters, which had decelerated to arrive at the battleground at a controllable velocity, the killers had continued to accelerate all the way from Takama. They arrived with a considerable momentum; fewer than half struck the Brazilian ship, but a hundred small impacts were still sufficient to open up the side of his vessel. Medeiros lost his line and began to drift.
“He’s down,” Richards said. “Not sure if he’s dead, but propulsion is offline.”
“Do we have any more busters? Any more killers?” Kiroshi looked from one to
the other of us.
I shook my head. “Busters are all expended. There are lots of killers, but they’re travelling away from Medeiros at high speed. They’ll take as long to decelerate as they took to accelerate to that velocity, then they have to accelerate back.”
“He might still be out by the time they get back. We don’t know how many roamers he has left after the space battle over Mack.”
That was true. It was certainly worth a shot, anyway. “Okay, General. I’m sending orders to the killers now. Light speed delay will add to the total turnaround time. I think we’re looking at twenty-two hours before they get back.”
Richards frowned. “Hell, we could get a couple of drones there in less time than that.”
“To do what? Even at full acceleration, they’re unlikely to do much damage.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of grabbing Medeiros himself.”
I stared at Richards. That hadn’t occurred to me. Stick some roamers in the drones’ holds, and they could enter the Brazilian ship and extract the replicant matrix. I felt a twinge of nausea at what we were not-quite planning. Memories of Homer, of the five cubes back on Earth during Bob-1’s training, swirled with images from my imagination of Mack under Medeiros’ thumb. But we were dealing with someone who was about to drop a metal meteor on a colony. Squeamishness was inappropriate.
* * *
The drones approached the Brazilian ship, which was still drifting. We’d decided this was important enough to sacrifice all of Asgard’s roamers, save two for rebuilding. This would be almost like a beach assault. Anything short of one hundred percent casualties would be acceptable.
The two drones came in as quickly as their drives could manage, braking with no leeway to arrive at rest just outside the rent in the enemy vessel. Cargo doors popped open and eight roamers, including two of the big industrial-size units, stormed across the gap. The squad headed straight for the location of the replicant matrix—we knew the layout from Bob-1’s first encounter with Medeiros, way back in Epsilon Eridani.
The roamers encountered immediate resistance, from the onboard roamers. The battle was short and furious—Medeiros was fighting for his life, now. The standard roamers worked to protect the big units, as those would be needed for moving the matrix. Plasma cutters flashed, and roamer parts floated around the enclosed space.
The battle tilted in our direction once we realized that we could still use the big units. Any time an enemy roamer got too close, an industrial unit lashed out with a leg. If the impact didn’t disarticulate the victim outright, being bounced off a wall took it out of the fight for a few moments.
Soon, we were down to one or two defenders—depending on how you counted body parts. Then the last roamer was dispatched, and—
“What the hell?” I exclaimed as all video feeds disappeared.
Garfield poked at consoles. “The cargo drones are gone, too. They’ve—wait a moment, that’s not true. I’m still getting telemetry from number 2. I’ll try to activate a camera.”
Richards jerked in surprise in his video window as the event registered at the human timescale. “What happened?”
“Looks like Medeiros fell on his sword rather than be captured,” Garfield said. He popped up a video window. “This is what the second drone is showing. It’s damaged, by the way. Won’t be flying back on its own.”
The window showed the Brazilian vessel, or what was left of it. Pieces of spaceship spun and caught the sunlight as they receded. The ship was cut in two, and the two halves had been opened like flowers.
“He knew,” I said. “He knew he was finished. I don’t know if he thought he was taking the victory away from us, or thought we’d capture him and extract secrets.” I shook my head. “I will never understand Medeiros. I really hope this is the last time I have to deal with him.”
“That’s a little worrying, though,” Garfield commented. “I remember him being a bit on the pompous side, at the first meeting with Bob-1. This time around he never said a word. Not even an exit monologue. I wonder what secrets he might feel the need to take to the grave.”
An excellent question, and the expression on Richards’ and Kiroshi’s faces showed the same concern that I felt.
* * *
“Never even saw him coming,” Mack said. He sat in my VR, holding a coffee, feet up on a footstool. “I remember talking to you about draining the swamps on Takama, and the next thing I know, I’m back in my default VR.”
“Yeah, he hit you square on.” I raised my coffee. “You can go over the videos at your leisure, but you missed some interesting times.”
“Which aren’t over, I’m afraid.” Mack looked at his coffee, a frown forming. “We have to assume Medeiros is still out there, in one form or another. We’ll have to set up defenses, especially here and in Alpha Centauri.”
“That’s right, buddy. The colonies are okay with you diverting all printers to defensive items until you have a minimum level of ordnance.”
“Yep. Busters, then a new vessel, then some clones, then more printers... It’ll be a while before I’m able to support the colonies directly.”
“They’ll do what they can with groundside printers, Mack. Might be a good idea for them to have at least a small autofactory on each planet, just on principle.”
Mack nodded, staring into space. “Just when we think we’ve got things figured out, the universe throws another curve.”
I grinned at him. “Well, that’s life.”
Cleanup
Marcus
September 2215
Poseidon
The loss of their main fleet was a blow to the Council, but not a fatal one, as it turned out. Maybe I’d been underestimating the Council, or maybe they had someone who was a terrific strategist. Whatever the reason, the Council kept coming up with surprises.
The first surprise, although I’d suspected as much, was that they didn’t have just the dozen cargo ships. Our first inkling of that came the day after our takeover of strategic ‘ground’ assets.
“We’ve got several cities under attack!” Gina announced, sitting up abruptly.
Kal opened one eye—he was lying on a blanket, getting some sun—and said, “With what?”
“See for yourselves.” Gina held her tablet up. On it was shown a grainy, obviously blown-up image of a vessel. It appeared to my eye to be a variation on a version-3 Heaven vessel.
“Interesting. Looks like they’ve been reading BobNet,” I said. “I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me. I wouldn’t normally think of it as strategic information.”
“And yet the improvements the Bobs have been making in the Heaven design have been primarily for military purposes,” Kal responded.
“Plus,” Denu added, “if they’ve been perusing BobNet, wouldn’t they have found out about the cloaking?”
I raised an eyebrow at Denu, then exited the android and frame-jacked. A quick scan of recent BobNet blogs reassured me on that front.
Returning to normal time, and to the android, I responded, “There’s nothing but general descriptions, Denu. With all the crap happening, Bill’s just been transmitting plans directly to other Bobs. A bit of serendipity, there.” I didn’t add that I’d just sent off a description of this situation to Bill. Hopefully, he would scan the blogs for any other potentially damaging information and remove it. Great. We’d just re-invented military secrecy.
Gina, who had continued monitoring the situation, announced, “Aanthor, Kaol, and Ptarth are fending off missiles. It looks like whoever is still fighting has decided to go for a scorched earth policy. They’re not even trying to board, just trying to knock the cities out of the sky.” She looked over at me.
I nodded. Reluctant as I was to get directly involved, in this case, hundreds of lives were at stake. I ordered several squads of busters down from their hiding place on Pelias, the inner moon.
“It’ll take a few minutes for them to get there,” I said to Gina. “Can you tell the cities that hel
p is coming?”
Gina nodded and typed furiously for a few moments. “Done.”
“This is unbelievable.” Denu shook his head. “They’re just trying to kill people.”
“It’s war, Denu,” Gina replied. “It’s not what we wanted, but apparently it’s what the Council finds preferable to losing. Although I don’t think they expected it to go this far, either. Most of their recent moves look more like ad libs than strategies.” She looked at me. “Three Council members still outstanding. This could be orders from any or all of them.”
“My money’s on Brennan, though.” Kal glanced at each of us. “Some of the others at least seemed to be misguided but well-intentioned. He was all about the power.”
“Maybe. Let’s get this done, then we can worry about assigning blame.” I looked up as my heads-up display showed the busters coming up on the fields of battle. I ordered them to take out the attackers—if possible, by taking out critical systems, but otherwise by whatever worked.
In seconds, the reports came back. Four ships downed by clean reactor strikes, three more totally destroyed. The two remaining ships turned tail and fled.
I took a moment to mourn the people I’d just killed. Very probably they were just following orders. But those orders had meant knocking a city containing several hundred civilians out of the sky. There was a point where following orders didn’t cut it.
I put a couple of cloaked drones on the tail of the escaping ships, and recalled my surviving busters. If there had been any doubt in the Council’s teeny minds that the cursed replicant was still extant, this engagement had removed it. The Council forces would be moving much more cautiously in the future.
“Tell the city defenders not to shoot down the surviving ships,” I said to Gina. “They might lead us back to the leadership.”
Gina nodded, and we settled back onto the grass. It was an odd juxtaposition—revolutionary leaders, in the middle of a shooting war, directing operations while lounging on a manicured lawn.
All These Worlds (Bobiverse Book 3) Page 12